A House in Webster Grove, Missouri: Can Demons Possess a House

I've told you before, I write fiction and nonfiction; I've also told you before if my story is fact, I tell you it's fact, and if it's fiction, I tell you so. This article is totally fact as best as I can deliver it. All things I am sure of, I can swear to, but I cannot swear to the unknown.

I have also mentioned in my previous writings that there were two incidents in my entire life which I saw, but could not explain, but there are many incidents and happenings that I have felt, and likewise; cannot explain. This is one of them.

The year was 1980, and I had been out of the Greater St. Louis Police Academy since June of that year. It was now November, just prior to Thanksgiving and I was stationed in the 5th precinct of the St. Louis County Police Department.

My wife Shelia, my daughter Cindy and myself were living in a two-bedroom apartment in Affton, Missouri, and were desperately looking for a house to rent. After telling some of our friends to let us know if they heard of any houses with cheap rent, we were told of one in Webster Groves, Missouri, so we set up a meeting with a lady who agreed to show us the house.

When we were shown the house, we could not believe our good luck; the house was fantastic. On the first floor, there was a very large living room with a large fireplace. There were bookcases on each side of it, and they really set off the room.

There was also a study, breakfast room, kitchen, and formal dining room, but there was something in the dining room which instantly grabbed my attention. There was no table or chairs there, and a huge reversed/inverted pentagram almost covered the floor of the room.

When I asked the lady who was showing us the house about it, she just smiled and said a group of college kids had rented the house recently and had placed the pentagram there, She said it was just a harmless design, which the owner would have removed in the near future. I asked her if we rented the house if I could remove it and she said sure but didn't offer a cut on the rent.

I wasn't afraid of the pentagram, but we had a five-year-old daughter who I was afraid might have bad dreams because of it. The thing also made my wife a little apprehensive, so I assured her that as soon as we moved in, I would sand it down.

As we toured the rest of the house, we were shown a full bathroom on that same floor, then we went up to the second floor, where we were shown three large bedrooms and two full bathrooms. Also, on that same floor was a large room with windows that stretched all along its east side. What it had been built for, I didn't have a clue.

When I asked what was on the third floor, the lady said it was an empty space that could be used for storage, large office, a playroom for our daughter, and many other things. When I ascended the stairs and opened the door, I was immediately amazed at how big it was. Other than beautiful hardwood floors and several windows, it was an empty space. I could imagine how it would make a great entertainment area and could imagine a pool table sitting in the center, with dartboards and an exercise area there.

Finally, I asked what was in the basement, and was casually told by the lady that it was where the furnace was located. When I asked if we could see it, she said sure, but she didn't like spiders, and she would let us venture there alone.

As we descended the stairs, the smell of an old house was very apparent, and then we saw the monster; a huge gas furnace which was on and working, and doing a great job at making weird sounding noises. I had not noticed the ancient radiators that were in every room except the third floor, but when we went back upstairs, there they were. I had been so busy taking in the house, I had totally overlooked them.

We were young and thought the rent on the house was a fantastic deal, and I even had aspirations of trying to buy it. What we didn't take into consideration is the costs of heating and cooling this behemoth house, or what might be living there with us.

We were told that we didn't have to sign a lease, and could move out at any time. I thought this was odd, and the fact we didn't have to pay a security deposit, should have set off bells, but it didn't. I was still a young police officer and had so much to learn about the world.

Of course, as you probably guessed, we took the house and quickly moved in, and everything was fine for the first couple of days, but then things began to happen. The first thing I remember which was odd was a feeling I got when I prepared to sand the dining room floor to remove the pentagram. It was if someone or something didn't want it bothered, but nothing happened, and when I say nothing happened, I am including the fact that I could not remove the pentagram with my sander. After taking a closer look at the symbol, I realized it wasn't painted onto the floor; it was burned into the floor.

When I told my wife about my dilemma, she suggested we should try to find a throw rug large enough to cover it, but we never got around to that. We seemed to have too much else going on to shop for a rug, and our cash flow was weak.

During the first month we lived there, things continued to happen, such as unexplainable noises after dark, which I attributed to the antique heating system, but other things happened that we were never able to explain. My wife and I never saw anything like ghosts or paranormal activity, but we always felt a chill in the house even on warm days. We both had the feeling we were not alone and felt someone was watching us. We even let our daughter sleep in the same room with us.

One day I was outside in the backyard when I was approached by an elderly neighbor, who lived next door to us on the side the formal dining room was on. He said he had seen me leaving and arriving home after work, and saw I was a St. Louis County Police Officer. After some casual conversation, he got my attention when he said, "Have you seen or heard any unusual things in the house since you moved here?"

I told him about some strange noises we had heard at night, and about the pentagram which I had been unable to remove from the floor. He said he had not been in the house for a long time but had seen some college students sitting around some type of circle in the dining room late at night, chanting loudly. He also said he had seen some of them come out of the house after sitting around the circle.

He said they seemed disoriented and would fall onto their cars and say things he could not understand. He further stated they sounded like they were talking in another language he had never heard before, In addition, he said they had never bothered him or his family, and thought they were either drunk or on drugs. I told him I would be very wary and tell my wife to do the same.

It was shortly after this talk when a lady my wife babysat for came to pick up her child, which was about the same age as our daughter. My wife later told me when she left, she found our daughter crying. When she asked her what was wrong, Cindy showed her a bite mark on her arm and said the lady did it because Cindy had previously bitten her son.

When she was asked by my wife if that was true, she said "yes," but that had been several weeks ago and we had not seen any visible bite marks on her child. My wife wanted to tear the woman apart, but being a police officer, I told her to leave it alone and stop babysitting her child which she did.

A week later, I came home from work and my wife said someone had pushed Cindy down the stairs leading to the second floor. When I talked with our daughter, she said someone pushed her hard from behind, but there was no one there when she stopped falling. She was bruised, but okay. However, I wasn't and asked our Catholic Chaplin about demon-possessed houses.

Even though I am Baptist, one of our department chaplains rode with me a lot and we became friends, When I asked him if a house could be possessed by demons, he said yes, especially if they had been invited in; I immediately thought of the reversed pentagram. I also asked why a child would be attacked and not my wife and I, to which he stated, if the adults were strong Christians, the demons might attack the child because of the child's vulnerability.

I asked him if an exorcism might clear the house of evil, and he said yes, but if it didn't work, the demons might become angrier. He said the best thing to do was leave the house, which we did, and had no further episodes, except when we received the utility bill, and it was almost twice what the rent was.

This was a true incident, and even though my wife and I never saw abnormal entities in the house we felt them.